At least they seem to have learned the lesson of the VCR -- and of Napster.
She cannot learn how to reset the digital display on the VCR, stove, alarm and car.
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Before the invention of the VCR and the DVR, watching TV was a passive act.
By the VCR's peak in 1990, more than 200 million VCRs were being sold worldwide each year.
And from the VCR (1970) to the DVD (1996) to 3D TVs for home, CES rarely disappoints.
The Supreme Court in 1984 reversed the federal court decision finding that the VCR was an illegal product.
Unlike the CD-player, which was merely a better record-player, the VCR replaced no other gadget around the home.
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Thirty years before SOPA, the MPAA was in Washington, demanding legislative protection from a new and dangerous technology: the VCR.
The small robot can even turn appliances on and off via remote control, switching on the dishwasher or the VCR.
The main difference is that, in its day, the VCR was unique.
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That's how the VCR stayed on the market, despite facilitating video piracy.
Considered by many to be mature in the 1970s, it rebounded in the 1980s with the invention of the CD and the VCR.
The Supreme Court decided that the VCR was not illegal because the product is capable of important uses that do not infringe on copyright.
Almost every important new media technology of the last half-century the VCR, the MP3 player, cloud music services, YouTube has faced a copyright infringement lawsuit from incumbent content producers.
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And, year after year, the big networks imposed hefty price increases for ads, even as millions of viewers defected to cable, and early zapping technology--the remote control and the VCR--took hold.
As a newly minted lawyer representing VCR makers in the early 1980s, I stumbled upon the first-sale doctrine in a proposed bill in Congress legalizing the VCR (which had been found illegal by a federal court of appeals).
Both the Aereo and Dish technologies rely on the 1984 Supreme Court holding in the Betamax case, which made it clear that consumer recording technology, in that case the VCR, is legal if it has uses that do not infringe copyright law.
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The threat posed by the fidgety remote control and the poky VCR pales in comparison with the digital threat.
We know more than a few preschoolers who seem more adept at technology than their still-trying-to-figure-out-the-VCR parents, but if for no other reason than the flashy colors, we think more than a few kids might dig Fisher-Price's new Kid-Tough digital camera and "FP3" player.
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When first introduced, the Betamax VCR may have been technically superior to its VHS rival, but it was a dead-end design.
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You can move the bits to a D-VHS VCR like the one JVC makes, but that has not yet gained broad acceptance.
Tom Edwards of NPD Group says it may only take 10 years for DVD to reach 90% of the population compared to the 25 years it took VCR's to achieve the same level of interest.
Absolutely--if they cost the same as a VCR and could record movies as well as play them.
Hooking up the system was a snap, although the cable box and VCR had to be removed first.
The system beats the old-fashioned VCR because it's easy to program (it knows when your favorite show is on) and it lets you fast-forward through annoying advertisements.
Somebody had a grainy VCR copy of the original broadcast, perhaps, transferred it to digital and posted it on the Web.
Among the largest underlying components of VCR, in trading today Amazon.com Inc. ( NASD: AMZN) is off about 0.4%, Walt Disney Co. ( NYSE: DIS) is down about 0.6%, and Comcast Corp ( NASD: CMCSA) is lower by about 0.1%.
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Among the largest underlying components of VCR, in trading today Home Depot Inc ( NYSE: HD) is off about 0.4%, Ford Motor Co. ( NYSE: F) is down about 1.1%, and Starbucks Corp. ( NASD: SBUX) is lower by about 1.2%.
To use a silly example to make the point, you may have been laboring so long as so hard on perfecting your idea for a VCR that you fail to see that the world has moved on to digital recorders.
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